Managing Distributed Networked Appliances in Home Networks

… on Service Oriented …, 2010

Pervasive computing environments such as our future homes are the prototypical example of a dynamic, complex system where Service-Oriented Computing techniques will play an important role. A home equipped with heterogeneous devices, whose services and location constantly change, needs to behave as a coherent system supporting its inhabitants. In this paper, we present a fully implemented architecture for domotic applications which uses the concept of a service as its fundamental abstraction. The architecture distinguishes between a pervasive layer where devices and their basic internetworking live, and a composition layer where services can be dynamically composed as a reaction to user desires or home events. Next to the architecture, we also illustrate a visualization and simulation environment to test home coordination scenarios. From the technical point of view, the implementation uses UPnP as the basic device connection protocol and techniques from Artificial Intelligence planning for composing services at runtime.

Connected technology in the home is growing rapidly due to advances in modern electronics. The growth of broadband is being followed by an associated uptake in home networks. At present the enabling technology tends to be visible and distinct (PCs, multimedia systems, Televisions, screens, etc). In the future, we predict the home will incorporate embedded systems and even greater networked-enabled shared resources resulting in a pervasive computing environment. Currently, there are a number of challenges to make this a reality. For example, how will users interact with the technology in a way that is intuitive and non-threatening; how will the wide range of devices communicate and coordinate their requirements and services? This paper describes research which is investigating the concept that as devices in the home become more interconnected and announce their capabilities over a network, a new model will present itself where devices are decomposed into functional components which may then be reused in a much more flexible way. An architecture to support this model is proposed and presents a novel approach to device configuration called Task Oriented Programming (TOP) together with work on meeting the challenge of providing suitable user interfaces in the pervasive home.

2nd IET International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE 06), 2006

A wide range of disconnected communication networks is emerging in the home. Each has different functions and implementation architectures. The user experience as well as the overall functionality would be vastly enhanced if these networks could collaborate in a seamless fashion. Collaboration is challenging because it requires disparate devices and components to interoperate in a user friendly, scalable and upgradeable fashion. We conjecture that such cooperation might be most efficiently assured using a supporting infrastructure. The Universal Contents Router (UCR) is introduced as an infrastructural component. The UCR moves the burden of connectivity away from the end devices to the system core. The paper spells out ZUMA, or functions that a UCR should support, discusses UCR architecture and presents a first-order prototype. 1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION A number of independent communication networks are emerging in the residential space. Personal electronics and multimedia devices are the most noticeable. However, other devices, such as appliances, are now also communication enabled. The evolution of these networks is outlined below. Voice, one of the earliest home communication systems, developed from a single line to a cluster of cordless devices connected to a central "base station". Cellular phones, with different manufacturers, user interfaces, and a distinct set of functions, operate in parallel. Further, data communication has evolved from a single computer with low speed Internet access to a local area network that interconnects numerous desktops and laptops. Recently, high-speed connections, such as DSL, have become commonplace. In addition, wireless technologies are used to add extra mobility in the home. They are used to extend the LAN (WiFi) or to connect wireless peripheral devices to PC's (via Bluetooth). Communication infrastructures are also being developed for the home automation and monitoring spaces. Automated air conditioning and light control systems have the potential to control peak power consumption, and increase energy efficiency [13]. These systems use proprietary commercial communication networks (e.g. Lon-Works and BagNET). Manufacturers are also outfitting white products (laundry machines, refrigerators, etc.) with communication capabilities. Moreover, the house may have a fire alarm, security and/or a surveillance system. These are connected to a dispatch center and may have several camera feeds that need display devices (or can use the in-house TV circuit).

2004

This paper presents the development of a lightweight component model that allows user to manage the introduction and arrangement of new interactive services and devices in the home. Interaction techniques developed through userparticipation enable household members -rather than designers -to configure and reconfigure interactive devices and services to meet local needs. As part of this we have developed a tablet-based editor that discovers available ubiquitous components and presents these to users as jigsaw pieces that can be dynamically recombined. We conclude by considering the broad implications for the design of interactive domestic environments suggested by our approach.

This paper presents the prototype of a universal model for implementing the smart home. In this model, computers and various digital devices form a single network that operates at a high level of intelligence to provide and manage common services. The universal model includes a standard framework that will enable hardware and software vendors to develop consumer electronic (CE) devices that connect easily to the smart home network. An eHome server stores and controls data while various information technologies connect home devices and appliances to the network's PC. A set of definitions is formulated for the user interface (UI), operations and management (OM) and artificial intelligence (AI) modules. For each component, a set of standard properties and interfaces was defined to create a seamless experience. The main contribution of this model is that it offers a possible solution to many of the hardware and software design issues in the eHome environment.

2009

In this paper we propose the design and development of a flexible smart home architecture using a peer-to-peer (P2P) approach. We specifically focus on two distinct aspects of this proposed architecture. First, we analyze how the different home devices and services can be represented as individual peers in order to have a decentralized system, which is scalable by nature and avoids the single point-of-failure usually attributed to a centralized server. Second, we investigate the distribution of application workflow logic among the peers to develop a flexible home architecture with autonomous behavior of the peers. We analyze the suitability of Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) to realize the proposed P2P-like architecture for the smart home. We further show how to distribute the application workflow logic among the peers and yet achieving the same global behavior of the system. Our experimental results show that DPWS provides tools and techniques, in particular its discovery and eventing mechanism, which can be leveraged to provide flexibility and autonomy in the overall architecture.

This paper presents a framework that adapts the conventional home electric appliances with the infrared remote controls (legacy appliances) to the emerging home network system (HNS). The proposed method extensively uses the concept of service-oriented architecture to improve programmable interoperability among multi-vendor appliances. We first prepare APIs that assist a PC to send infrared signals to the appliances. We then aggregate the APIs within self-contained service components, so that each of the component achieves a logical feature independent of device(or vendor)-specific operations. The service components are finally exported to the HNS as Web services. Thus, the legacy appliances can be used as distributed components with open interfaces. To demonstrate the effectiveness, we also implement an actual HNS and integrated services with multi-vendor legacy appliances.

2005

Abstract In this paper, we propose a personal home sewer that makes it possible to coordinate a variety of home appliances. Since each person has a different personal home server, it allows him/her to personalize how to use the appliances according to his preferences. Also, a personal home server can discover and configure appliances at any places, such as railroad stations, cars, and streets as well as houses in a seamless way.

2002

2009

ABSTRACT As smart homes become more widespread, the need for more natural forms of interaction in the home also increases. On the one hand, forcing a user to go to a central home controller at every required change does not make sense. On the other hand, having a different controller for each device is also quite overwhelming. Object-Specific Interfaces (OSIs) allow an interface customized to an object of interest to show up on a mobile device when in close proximity to it.